Ronny Dawson
SPACEX LAUNCH: TESLA CAR THAT WAS SHOT IN FALCON HEAVY HAS OVERSHOT MARS AND IS ON NEW ORBIT Article link: It’s not clear where exactly the car is headed, or how long it will last – but the long trip will be encouraging to SpaceX’s potential private partners.
The car is not on some scientific voyage. This was a test launch, so SpaceX needed a dummy payload — and Musk previously said he wanted it to be the “[s]illiest thing we can imagine.” So he picked his own luxurious Tesla roadster.
“I love the thought of a car drifting apparently endlessly through space and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future,” he said in December
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory got its hands on data from SpaceX on Wednesday, and it suggests the roadster will stay closer to the sun. The farthest it will go is about 250 million kilometers from the sun, or about as far as Mars.
It’ll reach its farthest point from the sun in November, and in September 2019, it will complete its first full loop around the sun. It’ll continue to complete one full orbit about every 19 months.